


Crazy

by sophiagratia



Series: A Smaller Table and a Wine List [2]
Category: Last Tango In Halifax
Genre: F/F, Gen, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Romantic Friendship, Slow Dancing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-11
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-09-23 14:22:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9661133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophiagratia/pseuds/sophiagratia
Summary: Blame it on the wine. Or the sad ladies of classic country playlist. Or the moonlight. Or whatever.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FanchonMoreau](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FanchonMoreau/gifts).



> Set a few months after the Christmas special, but no spoilers. 
> 
> [Recommended soundtrack](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QEDb3xzdec&list=PLCBtelnuFbkUe7uBamWoOmVNZupfvJo4i).

Caroline looks down at her hands. They’re the only part of her that’s clean; she’d been having a manic gardening episode when Gillian turned up. The house, she reflects, really is beginning to look like it belongs to someone who gives a toss. And her fingernails are beginning to look like they belong to someone perpetually on the verge of nervous collapse.

She leans against the doorjamb and glances over at Gillian, sitting on the step below her, studying her own hands. Gillian and her bare knobby knees, in her girlish summer dress. The way her skin glows in the late evening light; the way her hair is falling down around her face. Caroline can’t help smiling. She reaches for the bottle, and pours them both another glass of wine.

As if pulled out of some reverie, Gillian blinks and shakes her head and turns to look up at Caroline. She smiles softly, and Caroline realises what feels surreal about her: she’s so still, so calm.

‘Ta, love,’ Gillian says, tipping her glass. She takes a sip, and laughs quietly at something, then shifts to rest her head against Caroline’s knee. ‘God, this is nice,’ she sighs.

‘It is,’ Caroline replies, surprised to find that she means it. Gillian has that effect on her, the fact that she enjoys Gillian’s company always sneaking up on her, the way she cares for Gillian always catching up a moment behind. This _is_ nice, and part of the way it’s nice is what she can suddenly see now, with Gillian leaning against her on her back garden steps. The view that did something to her heart when she first saw it and does it again now, the hills soft and infinite in the fine evening mist that makes everything look like a painting. The slow-fading summer light. And the garden, and the house. Her house. Her own, her house where she lives, her house that she’s making into something.

Caroline smiles to herself and takes a long sip of her wine.

She’d been wrestling with the root system of a recalcitrant creeper and swearing softly to herself when Gillian scared the life out of her, appearing in the doorway with a hesitant smile and an apologetic ‘Hiya, Caz.’

‘Jesus, Gillian,’ Caroline said, sitting back on her heels and catching her breath. Gillian hovered on the threshold, biting her lip and flexing her hand. So disarming. Caroline shook her head and stood. ‘Hey,’ she said a little more gently. Gillian relaxed a little, crossed the space between them like she’d been waiting for permission. ‘You don’t want to hug me.’ Caroline gestured down her soil-covered front, wiping her forehead with her arm. She shook off her gloves and offered Gillian her hands instead. Gillian took them with a smirk and leaned up to kiss her cheek.

‘Suits you,’ said Gillian as she pulled back. ‘Bein’ covered in dirt.’ She reached up to thumb something off of Caroline’s forehead, smiling one of her flickering, nervy little smiles.

‘Yeah, well.’ Caroline turned, surveying the garden, to cover her flush. ‘Trying to sort this mess out,’ she said, gesturing. But looking now with fresh eyes, the mess was little enough. A bag of soil spilling over a little; her trowel and her rake; her gloves lying where she’d tossed them; the little pile of uprooted weeds. But otherwise – otherwise all was bloom and order. A summer garden; her summer garden.

‘It’s really come along,’ Gillian said softly. ‘It’s really lovely.’

‘Yeah,’ Caroline said, ‘yeah.’ She turned back to Gillian, shaking off whatever the feeling was that had come over her. ‘So! I take it your date didn’t…’

Gillian rolled her eyes. ‘Usual crap. Bolted when he got up to get a second round.’ She smiled, half sheepish, half mischievous. ‘Yeah, call me a coward, s’alright.’

‘No,’ Caroline said. ‘Good on you for trying, anyway.’ Better anything than Robbie, not that she was going to say that.

‘Yeah, whatever,’ Gillian said, but she was still smiling. ‘Anyway I were on me way home, theoretically, but next thing I knew I were on the M62.’ She was scrubbing her hand through her hair, making a mess of her ponytail. Gauging Gillian’s mood was always a fool’s game, Caroline thought, and sure enough, the humour fell from her face as Caroline watched, like a sudden change in the wind. ‘But if it’s a bad time,’ she stuttered, ‘or – or –’

‘God, no,’ said Caroline, finding herself smiling. She didn’t say, _you’d be rescuing me_ , but it was a near thing. ‘Past time for a glass of wine anyway.’ She gestured Gillian ahead of her.

There was no reason she should feel wrongfooted in her own kitchen, unprepared, as though Gillian expected some kind of refined hospitality, as though she didn’t turn up unannounced all the time. More and more these days. Maybe that was it, Caroline thought, reaching for wine glasses, trying to ignore her sharp awareness of Gillian moving through her space behind her. Not that it was unwelcome.

‘… Nancy Sinatra?’ Gillian asked. Caroline turned and bristled at her little smirk.

‘It’s just a playlist,’ Caroline said, fumbling. ‘For working to.’ She reached to turn it off, but Gillian swatted her hand away.

‘No, leave it,’ she said, her hand closing for a moment around Caroline’s. ‘It’s nice.’

Caroline took the excuse of reaching for a bottle to step away. She handed it to Gillian and made a show of rummaging in a drawer for the corkscrew, which was precisely where it always was. ‘Aren’t you cold?’ she asked, gesturing without looking at her little dress, her bare arms.

‘Oh, nah,’ Gillian demurred, and Caroline rolled her eyes.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ she said, ‘grab something on your way out.’ She pointed to the rack by the door. ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ she said when Gillian hesitated, and reached past her to pull down the first thing to hand – a vast ancient aran cardigan of her mother’s. She draped it around Gillian’s shoulders. Something made her complete the gesture by reaching to tuck a stray lock of hair back behind Gillian’s ear. ‘There,’ she said, her hand still resting on Gillian’s shoulder, not quite able to bring herself to break the touch, or her daft fond smile.

Gillian flushed. ‘Thanks,’ she said, screwing up her mouth to hide her smile. Another habit that Caroline found unaccountably disarming. Then she turned, and left Caroline to follow her out to the garden.

They’d talked their way through most of the bottle, and sat quietly together to finish it off, watching the slow fade of the sky, the mist falling over the hills.

It’s nearly dark now, and Caroline has been thinking of getting up to turn on a light, but the moon’s almost full and light streams onto the terrace from the kitchen along with Patsy Cline. And Gillian is still leaning against her, and she can’t quite make herself move.

‘God, I love this song,’ Gillian says, breaking their long silence. ‘Never gets old, no matter how many times you hear it.’ Her bare heel taps on the stone. She sways a little. After a moment, she starts singing along, very quietly at first and then gradually louder, finding her way into a broad lounge-singer caricature. Caroline can’t help laughing, and when she does, Gillian leans back to grin up at her. ‘ _And then someday, you’d leave me for somebody new_ ,’ she croons, with an absurd pout.

‘Oh, no,’ Caroline says, chuckling, laying a hand over her mouth as Gillian gets to her feet with a glow in her eyes, still singing.

‘ _Wonderin, what in the world did I dooo-ooo-oooo?_ ’ Her voice is scratchy and her grasp of key is approximate at a generous estimate, but she sings like she doesn’t care. She holds out her hand, breaking into a laugh. ‘Come on, then, Caz, how about it?’

She’s so lovely. Caroline almost says it aloud, _you’re so lovely_. Standing there silvered by moonlight, so slight in Celia’s massive cardigan, swaying her hips and reaching for Caroline, she’s too, too lovely.

‘Shit,’ Caroline says. She stalls, setting her glass down with too much care, getting too gingerly to her feet. She stalls, but she gives in, and Gillian grins, taking Caroline’s hand in her freezing one. ‘Oh, but I’ll get crap all over you,’ she exclaims, suddenly self-conscious, Gillian so casually pretty and her a rough mess, and sounding like an idiot on top of it. Gillian just shakes her head, rolling her eyes.

‘ _Crrrazy_ ,’ she sings with a pointed look for Caroline as she pulls her close and slides her arm around her waist. And her satisfied smile is worth quite a bit.

She moves so easily, Gillian, loose-limbed and so lovely, and for a moment Caroline feels lumberingly awkward, stiff and prudish, but Gillian just smiles up at her and sings ( _crazy for tryin’, and crazy for cryin’_ , overplaying it, so disarming) and eases Caroline into her rhythm. She’s leading. And Caroline, moving with her half in a daze, lets herself be led.

At some point, Caroline realises, she’s going to have to either call her a cab or invite her to stay. But she hates that first one, and the second’s too much to contemplate. So she lets Gillian pull her closer, and rests her cheek against Gillian’s temple, and moves with her, and puts off the decision.


End file.
